What is in Kelvin's Head?

Review: Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt â€“ Richard Holloway

10/08/2012

Here’s my review of Bishop Richard’s book which recently appeared in inspires:

It is hard these days to engage with the media of the chattering classes without encountering Richard Holloway. He who was once merely our Primus has become the darling of the exasperated folk for whom the church is no longer a vehicle for the divine but has instead become a stumbling block upon the way. Scarcely a week goes by without someone at church wanting to talk to me about the perceived â€˜factâ€™ that the former Bishop of Edinburgh has lost his faith. Some are inspired by him. Some are frustrated by him. Some are outraged.

Plus Ã§a change, plus c’est la mÃªme chose.

Upon reading Richard Hollowayâ€™s new memoir Leaving Alexandria, it becomes immediately obvious that the author has not simply lost his faith. That, after all would be to see the world in black and white â€“ the very thing that he insists we guard against. The truth is considerably more interesting.

This is a beautiful book. It is often a melancholy book. It is a book that must come top of the list of recent books which someone seeking to understand the modern Scottish Episcopal Church needs to read.

We begin, as each romantic needs must do, in a graveyard. To be precise, we begin in the graveyard at Kelham College. Kelham was the monastic community into which the young Richard Holloway was entrusted in order to turn him into a priest for the mission field. Kelham is no more and as the author gazes around the graveyard looking at the graves of his mentors and teachers there is a strong, powerful sense of acute loss.

Did Kelham succeed with Richard Holloway or did it fail? Did it manage to embed into his soul its unique charism? Or did it fail him utterly or even fail the church by producing him? Is the demand that Richard Holloway makes of the world even now to take seriously spiritual questions, in fact simply his own response to a lost religious community that lives yet in his heart?

Years after ceasing to be the Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Richard Holloway is still capable of generating headlines; still has an immense tolerance for the limelight and still says things more interesting than most of the other religious figures in Scotland put together. That in itself ought to be reason enough to want to read this book which whilst masquerading as autobiography is really something considerably more profound.

For those who know the Scottish Episcopal Church, there are plenty of other reasons too. Familiar figures pop up throughout its pages. There are glimpses into the world a Primus must inhabit. Some are clearly glamorous â€“ some much more uncomfortable, such as having to face Episcopal colleagues grumpy at a description of opponents of the ordination of women as â€œmiserable buggersâ€ and â€œmean-minded wee sodsâ€.

There are many pages here that move me, but none more so than those dealing with the reasons for the Mission 21 initiative in the Scottish Episcopal Church. Much that is written about mission these days seems to be about keeping churches going â€“ often churches which seem to have lost their entire raison dâ€™etre. The motives behind Mission 21 remain as compelling as ever. Here we find a heart beating for the poor in spirit, a soul desperate to reach out to the theologically needy and a passion for those who have been abandoned by much organized religion. It is an agenda for mission which remains completely relevant and persuasive in a way that makes congregation-saving seem utterly banal.

Having read this book, I have my own sense of melancholy about Richard Hollowayâ€™s ministry. However, Iâ€™m unable to think terribly negatively about his life. Iâ€™m unable to believe that his current proclamations about doubt are the tragedy that many people seem to think. They seem more likely to me to be merely the latest successes of a consummate attention-seeker, trying to draw the world back to an encounter with the deepest spiritual values of all.

Kelham did something to Richard Holloway which ensured that whilst he has breath in his lungs the rest of the world will think about God.

Never more so than by reading what is written in these pages.

Buy now at Amazon: Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt

Comments welcome

7 responses to “Reclaiming the web”

Paul Hutchinson

14/10/2015

Thank you for making me think in a different direction just before pausing for lunch. I have never had a blog, so came quite late to Internet social discourse, and have engaged more since joining one major network in 2010 and another in early 2014 – normally using those networks rather than a comment box such as this. Not all of us are natural creators of substantial original content, but like to be thoughtful in brief exchange, and so both those major networks, though cursed with many difficulties, serve those brief exchanges quite well. I do agree that the endless recycling of links (on both of them) can be wearying, and I do wish that some old friends would be a little more self-critical. But the price of any kind of social discourse is that one is vulnerable to the otherness of the other.
I feel I ought to be writing a more substantial comment here, but hope that this is enough. The time is not always there to offer deeper reflection: but sometimes a blogger needs to hear at least a small splash from the stone thrown down the well!

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1. Kelvin
  
  14/10/2015
  
  Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m aware that not everyone is a content creator, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of discovering different communities online and keeping the comments more or less in one place helps with that.
  
  The glory days of 50 or more comments on a post are probably over. I suspect I mourn the sense of community being created even more than I miss the interesting reflections of others. Retweets and shares are always welcome – but they are the means of amplification. Becoming loud isn’t the same as becoming wise, nor the same as becoming connected.
  
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Seph

14/10/2015

It’s a damnable shame—and mostly the fault of Facebook. Twitter at least has an etiquette of sorts, wherein it is considered impolite not to respond to the original tweet, which is usually made by the blogger in question.

Facebook, in short, is the scourge of the Internet. I have often been in groups which have decided to do all of their organizing on Facebook, despite my protests that I’m not on Facebook and don’t want to be, and really an e-mail list would be just as easy, and would they like me to set one up. This inevitably leads to my marginalization within the group, as no-one bothers to keep me abreast of the discussions to which I am not party.

Can you tell I’m upset about this?

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Daniel Lamont

14/10/2015

I am only an occasional user of Facebook but I know what you mean, Kelvin. And indeed, I never read the comments ‘below the line’ on newspapers like ‘The Guardian’. You offer some useful advice. I read yours and one or two other blogs on a regular basis but don’t always comment. However, I can see that the author of a blog would like some feedback. I would be sad not to have the blogs that I do read because they do give me a sense of what people are thinking and an odd sense of community.

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Father Ron Smith

14/10/2015

My own contribution to the blogopshere is, I’m afraid, Father Kelvin, limited to comments I make on other people’s blogs (such as ‘Thinking Anglicans’ and ‘Anglican Down Under’ – a local NZ forum; plus my own blog ‘kiwianglo’, where i pluck articles that interest me personally from the web and provide my own commentary. This still interests me, personally, and provides my few readers with information they might not otherwise be bothered to glean for themselves. Like you, I am no longer an avid Facebook fan.

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David Campbell

16/10/2015

Hi Kelvin – thoughtful as ever – and yours is invariably the first blog I turn to each day. That you bring pressing issues to a wider audience and to people who know, or used to know, the church you serve is a great thing. I’m still blogging relatively strongly, but it’s certainly a different blogging experience when work is set in a very different context and especially community from previously, writing these days mainly for myself about things that interest me, although not quite at the address you have in your Blog Roll. http://www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.com is where it’s “all” happening.

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1. Kelvin
  
  16/10/2015
  
  Thanks David – nice to hear from you. I’ve amended the link.
  
  I don’t think many people use blogrolls to find blogs these days but whenever I remove it my mother complains…
  
  Reply